Mark Frauenfelder inadvertantly shows his egotism and stupidity.

I clicked on the linked article expecting to learn something. What a mistake! This is the sort of methodology anyone who has completed the simplest puzzle has stumbled upon. This strategy doesn’t even solve any puzzle that is halfway interesting…assuming you find sudoku halfway interesting, which I don’t (because I’m bad at logic puzzles).

Solve this! (without even thinking)

Is there a better way to scream, “I’m a moron!” then to link that instructable article and add a comparison to solitaire: an entirely different game since not all solitaires are winnable and there is no single strategy to winning determined by logic alone. Hmm, Mark, maybe you find this stuff “boring” because you don’t know how to solve them. Let’s face it, the only reason you held crossword puzzles up on a pedestal is because Sundance told you to. Why don’t you join Cory and switch to Ubuntu. You’ve become exactly the sort of egotistical latte-sipping Gen-X dickhead that you rail against.

Thankfully a commenter on instructables linked a strategy guide that actually works.

I’ve only done sudoku puzzles for about a week (about six months ago). And in that week I intuited all the basic strategies—I’ve sort of used Hidden Quads (Every “hidden quad” I found was actually as simple as finding a single number not used on the other columns) and I had no formal method for intersection removal (which really is important to have and my lack of one was the cause of great frustration).

Every so often I’d reach a point where I’d have to blind test a value. This means is I didn’t figure out any of the “Fishy” and “Advanced” strategies. Some of these are quite clever—sort of like learning to solve a Rubik’s cube (or solve it fast). I can’t solve Rubik’s cubes, let alone speedcube, so it explains why I would not think of the clever strategies linked.

Of course, if Mark implied solving Sudoku is as “boring” as solving a Rubiks cube and then linked that shitty instructables site (and publish that “solution” in Make magazine), then I’d not have called him egotistical, just stupid.

Why I’m a dickhead

Here is how you solve a sudoku without thinking. If you solve it without an aid like this, you probably have to do a lot of thinking.

Yes, I’m being mean. My point is, if you ever solved a single (non-tutorial) sudoku then you’d know that the “solve sudoku (without even thinking)” article isn’t a solution at all. If you (obviously) haven’t solved a sudoku in your life, then what gives you the right to compare it to crosswords and solitaire? I mean the first thing I’d think to do is to try to apply the “solution” to a sudoku I haven’t solved to test it.

I mean isn’t that what a scientist or engineer does?

Speaking of being mean…

One thing I had as a kid was a Rubik’s cube—only my cube was a bit different. I took apart the cube, but it back together solved with only one corner piece flipped to be unsolved. I then mixed it up.

If you’ve every tried to solve a Rubik’s cube you’d understand why I did that.

Now that is mean.